


After the Money's Gone

by Anonymous



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Cannibalism (Implied), Gen, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-04 16:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10994817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Millions of people showed up to Paul Ryan's inauguration.  What was left of the National Parks Service said it hit a new record.Of course, they weren't there to watch him go by.   They weren't there to cheer him being sworn into office on the Jumbotrons that were set up everywhere.  No, they were there because there was free food, and they could eat as much as they wanted provided they didn't try protesting.  Everywhere Paul Ryan went that day, he saw hollow-cheeked citizens gorging themselves on whatever was put in front of them, devouring fruits and discarding pits and peels on the ground, then licking the sticky juice from their fingers, trying to see how much cheese they could fit into their cheeks, shoving bread into their pockets for later.It was unsightly.  The government shouldn't be paying for this.  Didn't these people have jobs?





	After the Money's Gone

The day before Donald Trump died, they found Mike Pence under the horse. 

At the time, what was left of the media--mostly Fox--circulated rumors about the mafia, about set-ups, even about witchcraft, but the truth of the matter, as Mike Pence croaked out later, was that he really liked horses. Mother understood, didn't she?

"It won't backfire," chuckled Mitch McConnell. "Grigory says Putin hates Hillary. They'll do whatever they can to stop her."

Paul Ryan wasn't terribly sure, and said so. 

"It's already working," chuckled Mitch McConnell. That was March. If Bernie Sanders won the Democratic nomination, in October they would drop the news: Moscow had been supporting him. No one would believe the socialist from Vermont didn't know, hadn't asked for it. 

"It's not working well enough," he said. "Reince?"

"I'm not pouring Baileys into my Lucky Charms," slurred Reince Priebus, who clearly had the same doubts about President Ted Cruz that he did. 

He wasn't. He didn't have any Lucky Charms. He was pouring Baileys into a cereal bowl and drinking it up with a spoon. 

Paul Ryan couldn't believe he'd turned down jogging with Ben Sasse for this. 

There were floods, and fires, and droughts. There were hurricanes that were stronger than ever before and tornadoes that ripped their way through the Midwest. A third of Florida was underwater and it was wreaking havoc on all their careful gerrymandering. 

"While I have enough canned soup to feed my family until 2152," sniveled Ted Cruz, "many of our constituents weren't quite so prepared. We need to take steps to ration our resources, and determine who gets what. My honorable colleague Senator McConnell and I have put together the following proposal, tentatively entitled Concerning Imminent Rationing and Competitions in the United States."

He remembered dragging himself to the river, gravel digging into his wounds. The water tasted sour and chalky, but it was important to stay hydrated. 

Barron Trump was a tall, good-looking child. The only resemblance to his father that Paul Ryan could see was how engrossed he was in his phone, and even in that he was different: His long fingers danced over the screen, and he didn't look up when Paul Ryan said, "I'm sorry for your loss."

He didn't want to look at Melania Trump. There was something unnerving about her. He put it down to the sunglasses, which were huge and covered half her face. He wasn't sure if it was because she was crying beneath them or because she wasn't. Both Ivana and Marla had been radiant at the funeral. 

Rex Tillerson died of polonium poisoning before he could testify. Paul Ryan didn't know why that meant he had to be summoned to the White House. He was shown into a dimly lit room, and asked to wait there. At one point Steve Bannon shambled in. 

Before he'd been disappeared, Jason Chaffetz had said that Bannon was a demon Roger Ailes had summoned from hell, but Paul Ryan knew better. The persistent stink of sulfur was what happened when you didn't fully commit to a healthy Atkins diet. 

He smiled sympathetically at Steve Bannon. Steve Bannon hissed, "Lebensraum," at him and then melted into the floor. 

"Is he crazy?" Kevin McCarthy demanded. 

"Hahahahaha," Paul Ryan said. 

The House floor was so noisy with the latest leak it wasn't like that many people could have heard them anyway. 

"Even leaving aside the whole technology thing," continued Kevin McCarthy, "does he have any idea how much food we produce? How much non-corn food we produce? And export to states who need it because they're undergoing natural disasters?"

"Stop it," Paul Ryan protested. You never knew who might be nearby with a tape recorder. "You're killing me."

"You do this," said Kevin McCarthy, his voice low and upset, "and millions of people will starve." 

Paul Ryan was very glad his body no longer reacted to that quite as immediately and strongly and embarrassingly as it did when he was in college. "Ahahahaha," he said again, "that Kevin McCarthy, such a kidder."

He was awoken by a stabbing pain in his stomach, worse than ever before. It wasn't quite pitch black, but he still couldn't see. There was a noise of surprise, almost human, and he reached out into the dark. 

And then he remembered where he was, and what had happened. A hand batted his aside, and the pain in his guts returned. 

"No," Paul Ryan said weakly. "No."

"He does that a lot," said Reince Priebus. His skin was a lot yellower these days. Fox News put it down to malnutrition. Technically that was true. He sighed. "We need a new Secretary of State. Someone with credibility. And--"

"Thank you," said Paul Ryan, "I'd be honored--"

"--and since you two were together in 2012, we thought he might listen to you." He sighed again. "Why can't they tap into the nation's strategic high fructose corn syrup reserve to make my Lucky Charms? It's not like they need it for that idiot's Diet Coke."

Twelve of them were boys. Seventeen of them were white. Obviously none of them had a college degree, and only a few had graduated from high school. He was a Republican politician, for god's sake. He had nothing to fear from them. 

"We are not staying in Washington." She sounded offended by the very thought. "Of course we can't go back to New York, so I suppose we'll have to move to," she shuddered, "California."

Some days he wondered how that rumor was spread. It certainly wasn't on Fox News. "California's been bombed," he said. "There's nowhere to go."

"He meant to bomb California, but they brought in the normal sized map and his hands were too small to reach over the Sierras." A smile flitted across her face. It wasn't sad, or fond. It was triumphant. It was dangerous. Paul Ryan chose to ignore it. "His hands were too small." 

Poor people didn't starve quietly in gutters like Dickensian extras. Poor people rioted. In the capital, they were locked away from all that, behind the only wall the Trump administration would ever build, but outside mobs were roaming the streets, looting Walmarts and Targets and grabbing all the food they could. 

On the feed from Madison, a mob threw Scott Walker out a window and then dragged his corpse through the streets. Other rioters jumped on a car with a "Don't blame me, I voted for Jill Stein" bumper sticker and smashed in the windows, the windshield, the doors and the trunk before setting it on fire. 

They only needed forty-nine votes. Marco Rubio was off on vacation, even if his state was now two-thirds under water, but Ivanka Trump was present to break any ties. They could afford to lose Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski--to literally lose them, Mitch McConnell had chuckled. Privately Paul Ryan didn't think most of what Mitch McConnell chuckled about was very funny. 

"Ann and I are strapping the dog to the roof of the car and heading out to Bears Ears National Monument."

"Good idea," said Paul Ryan. "It's going to be fracked to oblivion by 2025, so you'd better see it before then. But what about when you get back? I nee-- Your country needs you."

Mitt gave him a pitying look. "Paul," he said, and touched his face gently. "You do know it's part of one of the NPS pipelines to California? I'm not coming back."

"Your father would be so proud," he told Ivanka Trump. 

"Not really," she said. "He thought ugly people didn't belong on TV. I tried to tell him that there are such things as personal stylist deserts, and that some people just aren't very good at adjusting their wardrobe and makeup to their new selves every time they get plastic surgery, but he was pretty adamant."

Paul Ryan wasn't very good when it came to humor, but he was reasonably certain she wasn't making a joke. 

Sometimes he wondered if it would have made a difference if it had been a mare instead of a stallion. 

The Coast Guard reported that alligators were paddling through what remained of Mar-a-Lago, dangling classified documents from their teeth. 

"Well of course I don't sleep at night," he told Charlie Rose. "I'm too busy thinking about how to improve the lives of millions of taxpayers."

"I'm sorry," said Charlie Rose, "did you say millions of taxpayers or millionaire taxpayers?"

Fox News called him a pussy for not bodyslamming a seventy-six year-old-man. 

There wasn't any rioting in New York. Rumor had it that they were still receiving food shipments from Canada, or had stockpiled enough for various hurricanes over the years, so they weren't bothered by the shortage. The closest anyone got to violence was when someone aggressively tried to cut in line. They were containing their destruction to one very small, very specific, area of the city. 

The atmosphere on the feed was festive. New Yorkers were singing and chanting and drinking, all as they lined up for their turn to help demolish Trump Tower. They would either go up and use a sledgehammer to knock holes in the walls, or carry something back down, where they would toss it on the ground and stomp on it to raucous cheering and applause. Construction workers and cops were on hand to direct the whole thing. 

Justin Amash said it looked like fun. Paul Ryan remembered that, because _his_ idea of fun was demolishing the social safety net, and Trump Tower looked nothing like the social safety net, and also after that no one ever saw Justin Amash again. 

He was only a little disappointed that Mark Meadows got to introduce the Be Responsible: Earn A Dollar Act in the House and not him. He'd always wanted to strip away all forms of federal assistance and abolish the minimum wage. And he would get the chance now, when the bill was sent to him for signing, but it wasn't the same. It wasn't how he'd dreamed it would go, although he had to admit that none of this was how he'd dreamed it would go. 

When he shook Melania's hand goodbye, he tried not to judge her for making a mess of her nail polish, which was a very dark red and caked under her nails. She was a grieving widow, after all. It was why he didn't say anything about California. He was pretty sure at this point that going to California was a euphemism, like how Evan McMullin was spending more time with his family. 

She touched Barron very lightly on the shoulder, and they left together, blue scarves trailing behind them, sure and graceful and gone. 

Wyoming was on fire. Like, all of it. 

Barack Obama flew in from Chicago, and came out of the future ruins of Trump Tower holding up what the White House communications team spent weeks insisting was not one of Donald Trump's spare toupees. The crowd went wild.

Maybe they had planned this poorly. When he arrived, everyone was eating peacefully. They were even sharing food! Some of them were huddled together for warmth. No one was fighting over the weapons. It was like they didn't care about their second amendment rights at all. 

Ivanka Trump was right, her father would have hated this. It would probably receive horrible ratings. They would have to cancel it. 

He was so deep in self-recrimination that he didn't notice they'd noticed him until there was a shout, and one of the older boys picked up a gun--finally--and shot at him. 

"California's been destroyed," he said. "Everyone knows California's been destroyed."

Mitt shook his head. "You think Trump would destroy California? He still wants a TV show. He just bombed western Nevada and Arizona to close the roads and have something to show on Fox."

He cleared his throat. "I think people would notice if parts of Nevada and Arizona had been turned into post-apocalyptic hellscapes, Mitt."

Hillary Clinton came out with what was indisputably Donald Trump's copy of _Mein Kampf_ and, looking straight at the Fox News cameras, turned it into a teach-in in Central Park about why everyone needed to resist authoritarianism and insist upon the truth and their rights and human dignity for all. Fox News cut its coverage about five minutes in, but the whole thing was available on YouTube until those servers went down too.

He could hear footsteps coming back. A light tread, a high voice, a child's voice, an innocent child's voice. 

"Help," he called. "Help."

There were two of them, he could see that much. He didn't know if the arena had gotten darker or if his vision was dimming. They stopped and conversed, so quiet he couldn't make anything out. 

The smaller one knelt by him again, and put its hand over the wound in his stomach. 

Millions of people showed up to Paul Ryan's inauguration. What was left of the National Parks Service said it hit a new record. 

Of course, they weren't there to watch him go by. They weren't there to cheer him being sworn into office on the Jumbotrons that were set up everywhere. No, they were there because there was free food, and they could eat as much as they wanted provided they didn't try protesting. Everywhere Paul Ryan went that day, he saw hollow-cheeked citizens gorging themselves on whatever was put in front of them, devouring fruits and discarding pits and peels on the ground, then licking the sticky juice from their fingers, trying to see how much cheese they could fit into their cheeks, shoving bread into their pockets for later. 

It was unsightly. The government shouldn't be paying for this. Didn't these people have jobs?

Time passed in a blur of sweat and pain, a little like a really good workout except he was lying on the ground and had a bullet in one leg and buckshot across his belly and probably infections too. He drank from the river and at one point tried to eat grass. He cramped up and instinctively curled into a fetal position, which only tore more at his wounds. He passed out a few times. He became weaker from hunger, weak like a kitten that couldn't afford a gym membership or protein powder. 

Donald Trump tried to send off a tweetstorm, but there was no more Twitter. 

He tried to send in the military, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff replied, "New phone, who dis?"

Mitch McConnell kept smiling and chuckling as he heard about it. But Paul Ryan didn't think it was a laughing matter. What if they'd actually had to do something?

Who wore scarves in August?

John Boehner, he thought, was probably laughing it up with a box of wine and a lawn chair somewhere. And then he remembered what had happened to Ohio. They weren't even on a coast. They weren't even on a fault. 

"Hey," he said, holding out a hand, "I think there's been some kind of a misunderstanding here."

He was lucky the shot had gone wide, but he was still shaking. Maybe Chris Murphy had had a point in his filibuster. "You see," he said, "I'm not a part of this, okay? I am not a part of--"

One of the girls picked up a handgun. Her first shot missed too. Nevertheless, she kept shooting. 

"Oh, well," sang Lindsay Graham. Paul Ryan felt sorry for him. His only workout these days was lifting a one-liter bottle of bourbon. He didn't even switch arms. "What the hell."

Mar-a-Lago burned down, fell over, and then sank into the sinkhole. 

Donald Trump screamed for three days straight. 

Reince Priebus's black eye was not caused by malnutrition. 

Nobody said anything. 

If people still wrote books instead of eating them, someone might have written in his biography that his father's death had left a hole in his life that he wanted Mitt Romney to fill. But that was not true. Paul Ryan did not have any holes for Mitt Romney to fill. All Paul Ryan's holes could be filled with cuts to Social Security and school lunches and special needs kids. 

Herbert Hoover's desk wasn't very comfortable. And sometimes it felt like the curtains were watching him. 

The larger of the two children came forward more slowly, burdened by something heavy. Had there been bags of medical supplies at the Cornucopia? Why, when they were all going to die anyway? 

When she got close enough, he saw she was lifting it above her head, and it was a rock. A fairly large rock. And as it came down, it blotted out the stars and what remained of the light. 

"Don't go," he whispered, as Mitt was about to do just that. "We're so close."

Mitt stroked his hair apologetically. He looked very sad. "To what?"

Mitch McConnell clapped him on the shoulder. "The great work is not quite ready yet," he said with a smile stained red by his bleeding gums. 

"We're not starting?" But the tributes were already in place. Was this going to be Obamacare repeal all over again? And on live TV?

"In a minute. You see," said Mitch McConnell, "in order to get everyone to agree with this, we had to make some compromises." But they hadn't needed Democratic support. They'd had the votes. He'd signed it into law. And Mitch McConnell really wasn't doing Atkins right: he stank of sulfur. "Some arrangements. Some sacrifices, so to speak."

Paul Ryan looked at him in bemusement. He'd read the law. They were following it. There'd been no last minute judicial intervention like they feared. 

And then Mitch McConnell chuckled and pushed him into one of the tubes, and he was shooting upwards into the Cornucopia, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. 

"This is an outrage. It's an offense to everything we stand for as a country--to everything we stand for as human beings. It's unbelievably cruel and cynical and heartless and I can't believe anyone would even entertain the idea, let alone try to turn it into legislation," said John McCain. "I'm voting yes on it anyway."

**Author's Note:**

> With apologies to Suzanne Collins and Nevada. 
> 
> I think I've spelled everything correctly, but please feel free to point out any errors. Except Reince Priebus. Reince Priebus is never going to look right. 
> 
> In case it needs to be said: work of fiction, etc., etc., but you already knew that because Paul Ryan would never feed a starving child, even inadvertently.


End file.
